Obama’s Running Mate => Sen. Joe Biden
Former presidential candidate and Delaware senator Joe Biden has officially become Obama’s running mate for the 2008 election. Sorry Hillary.
Here’s some background:
Biden first mentioned his intentions to run for president on the on December 8, 2004 on a radio show. In the January 23, 2006 edition of Delaware’s The News Journal, columnist Harry F. Themal reported that Biden “occupies the sensible center of the Democratic Party.” Themal concludes that this is the position Biden desires, and that in a campaign “he plans to stress the dangers to the security of the average American, not just from the terrorist threat, but from the lack of health assistance, crime, and energy dependence on unstable parts of the world.” He officially dropped his campaign in January of this year.
He is currently serving his sixth term. Biden has served for the sixth-longest period among current Senators (fourth among Democrats) and is Delaware’s longest-serving Senator. He is the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in the 110th Congress. Biden has served in that position in the past, and he has served as Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
Biden took office on January 3, 1973, at age 30, becoming the fifth-youngest U.S. Senator in United States history. At age 30, Biden was at the minimum age to become a U.S. Senator. He has since won additional terms easily, defeating James H. Baxter, Jr. in 1978, John M. Burris in 1984, M. Jane Brady in 1990, and Raymond J. Clatworthy in 1996 and 2002, usually with about 60 percent of the vote. He is now the longest-serving U.S. Senator in Delaware history.
In a June 22, 2008, interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, Biden confirmed that he would accept the vice presidential nomination if offered. The Associated Press reported on August 22, 2008 that Biden had been chosen by Barack Obama to be his running mate, citing anonymous Democratic Party sources. The choice was confirmed on Obama’s official campaign website shortly after AP’s announcement.
Will he be the VP in 2009? Hopefully…
No real surprise here. Obama needed someone more experienced to counter those criticisms, and there’s no way he was going to pick Hillary. Not only did they spend the primary season picking each other apart, but nothing would have turned out the right-wing vote quite like the possibility of Hillary in office. Biden’s a safe, predictable pick, but probably a good move from a political standpoint.